On Thu, Mar 23, 2006 at 12:05:46PM -0500, glyph at divmod.com wrote:
[...]
>> For now, because defining "trivial" is so hard (what if your docstring fix
> has a typo which actually changes some code which breaks some tests?), and
> it is always too tempting to classify "just this one" branch as "trivial"
> because the author wants to merge it really fast and it's not _too_ long,
> the proposed solution is to have a shared "minor fixes" ticket and branch,
> which should be reviewed once a week or so, and merged en-masse.
As stated on IRC, I think this adds significant, needless overhead to the
process for zero benefit.
The risk of a trivial commit (let's say this is defined as purely small cosmetic
or documentation changes, and that any code change is considered by definition
non-trivial) going wrong is low. Even if it *does* go wrong, the cost of fixing
that is low (a simple revert away, and diagnosis is going to be easy with a diff
that tiny). The proposed process is out of proportion with the problem.
Launchpad requires mandatory reviewer approval for merging to trunk -- with an
exception for trivial commits. Trivial commits must have [trivial] in the
commit message, or they are automatically rejected. Given we already puts diffs
in our commit mails, post hoc reviews are easy if anyone cares. Abusing
[trivial] would be dealt with the same as any other abuse. The system works
very well for us. I think it would work well for Twisted, and the cost is
almost nothing: committers have to add "[trivial]" to commit messages.
Vote "no" to mindless bureaucracy! ;)
-Andrew.